The Duration of Impella 2.5 Circulatory Support and Length of Hospital Stay of Patients Undergoing High-risk...

To evaluate the impact of duration of Impella 2.5 support (Abiomed, Danvers, MA) on hospitalization of patients after high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). There has been a continuous increase in prevalence of coronary artery disease with more patients needing PCI during acute myocardial infarction. Some of these patients have to undergo high-risk revascularization with circulatory support like the Impella 2.5 device.

This study was a single center retrospective study of patients admitted to our hospital who required Impella circulatory support during percutaneous coronary intervention. Patients' medical records, cardiac catheterization laboratory and 2-D echocardiography reports were reviewed to ascertain left ventricular ejection fraction, duration of Impella support, Coronary Care Unit (CCU) days and the length of stay in the hospital. A P-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Over a 15-month period, we had 25 patients with 19 males and 6 females. Mean age of the patient cohort was 68 ± 10 years. Mean LVEF of the group was 32 ± 16%. Mean length of hospital stay was 8 ± 8 days and mean CCU stay was 4 ± 4 days. The Impella was successfully inserted in all cases with a median duration of support of 70 minutes (range, 4 - 5760 minutes). Bleeding complication occurred in 8%. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between the duration of Impella support and hospital stay was 0.49 (P = 0.023) while it was 0.71 (P = 0.001) between Impella support duration and CCU days.

Our study suggests that there is a positive correlation between the duration of Impella 2.5 circulatory support and hospital stay and/or CCU days. The correlation seems to be stronger with CCU days.